Medicinal cannabis company Rua Bioscience is now live on the New Zealand stock exchange, debuting at 70 cents a share.
Photo: 123 RF
It is the first new listing in over a year and comes after a successful initial public offering which raised $20 million, of which $5m was set aside for local investors.
When the company began trading at 11am shares were well up on the issue price of 50 cents.
Company chair Trevor Burt said the IPO had been a roaring success.
"It was certainly well over-subscribed. The priority offer was way oversubscribed and so we've had to scale it back."
The launch was being marked with two events, one in Auckland at the NZX on Queen Street and another in Ruatoria at Uepohatu Marae.
While the moment was usually marked by the ringing of the bell, instead co-founder of the company Panapa Ehau blew a conch shell to mark the start of trading.
"Everyone's feeling great ... it's a jocular mood," Burt said.
"We've got our next milestones to achieve now, which is getting revenue from our first market and products into Germany, which will be towards the end of the first half of next year.
"Between now and then we finalise getting our GMP [Good Manufacturing Practice] certification and actually growing the commercial crop, of which we've got the first stage of that happening now."
The company emerged from Hikurangi Enterprises, a Ruatoria-based medicinal cannabis firm which was started with crowdfunding and local investment four years ago.